Eternal Night
by puresilk
Summary: Bella wakes up in a living nightmare, with superhuman powers she doesn't understand and one hell of a burn in her throat. As the events leading up to her death begin to come back to her, she realizes who is to blame for damning her to an existence of eternal night.
1. Trapped

**Disclaimer: All things Twilight (including characters, etc.) are property of Stephenie Meyer.**

**Trapped**

**BELLA'S POV**

I awakened in a soft, black place, completely disoriented. My eyes were blind in the total darkness, and I took a moment to try to clear my head. The disorientation wasn't exactly an unfamiliar feeling, because I'm a heavy sleeper, and I sometimes wake up not knowing where I am or how I got there. This time, however, felt different. I closed my eyes and tried to think back to the last thing I was doing before I fell asleep. My memories seemed distant and hazy, and all I could recall were vague impressions of the nightmares I'd had while I slept.

The next thing I noticed was the smell. An unusual mixture of scents assaulted my nose—I could distinctly identify the smells of cedar and satin, the musk of raw, wet earth, and traces of the sickeningly sweet essence of flowers. I hated the unique smell of cut flowers from the florist – it brought forth a flood of unwanted memories of the funeral – carnations, the neighbor's dry tuna casserole, insincere, clichéd words of consolation, lilies, red-rimmed brown eyes, empty and staring back from the mirror, the hollow feeling in my heart, chrysanthemums, melancholy notes from an old pipe organ...

I became aware of an odd cacophony of sounds emanating from every direction: faint noises of crawling, scratching, squirming, and clicking. The sickening symphony turned my stomach, and for the first time since I'd opened my sightless eyes, my stomach tightened with fear. I couldn't fathom why it was taking me so long to return to awareness and remember how I'd gotten here. I was certain that my senses of smell and hearing were heightened by my virtual blindness, and that wasn't aiding my cause to figure out where I was.

Shaking my head in a vain attempt to clear it, I decided it was time to get up. I thought that stretching out my muscles would surely help to clear the hazy fog from my head. As I sat up, my forehead made contact with the hard ceiling above me. The impact didn't hurt, but it startled me, so I lay back down quickly. Extending my arms to explore my surroundings, I began to panic.

I reached out to my sides, sliding my hands along the satiny walls of my narrow enclosure. Hesitating, I slowly felt above me, terrified of what I might find. My hands met with the satin lining there, confirming my fear. Disbelieving, I slid down, using my hands and feet to trace the planes of my three-dimensional prison. When recognition hit me, I started to scream, and even the sound of my own voice startled me. It was unfamiliar, alien.

My worst nightmare had been realized. I was lying in a box – cedar lined with satin – six feet in the damp earth, with insects and vermin burrowing all around me and the heady stench of my funeral flowers still clinging to the interior of my casket. I'd been buried alive.


	2. Escape

Disclaimer: All things Twilight (including characters, etc.) are property of Stephenie Meyer.

Escape

I waited for the tears that never came. They pricked my eyes, but I couldn't make them fall—I was denied the satisfying release. I was probably dehydrated. I stopped screaming, trying to conserve what little oxygen I had left. Even though I knew it was hopeless, I started making plans to escape this, my final prison. If I could somehow generate enough force to push the casket lid up… then the only barrier between me and sweet, life-giving air would be six feet of firmly packed dirt. I was going to die.

Trying to escape would be a pointless, painful struggle. Unless… unless there was something unusual about my burial. I let the hope swell up inside me, if only to comfort me in my final hours. A morbid thought occurred to me: I hadn't been embalmed. The very idea made me wretch – a dry, horrible noise – but nothing came up. I idly wondered how long it had been since I'd eaten anything. I didn't feel hungry, but I supposed that was to be expected. Food would be the last thing on anyone's mind when they discovered they were trapped in a wooden box in the ground.

It was cool in the casket, cooler than it should have been, given that I'd been recycling the air for an indeterminate amount of time with my hot, humid breaths. It was a tight space and the oxygen would run out soon, but my breathing wasn't labored. Not yet, anyway.

I tried to focus on calming myself down before I carried out my doomed escape plan. Slowing my respiration would save me valuable minutes of air, though the thought crossed my mind that perhaps it would be better to expedite what was certain to be an unpleasant end. I concentrated on my breathing – in, out, in, out – and I tried to gauge the effectiveness by listening for my slowing heartbeat. I listened at length for a beat that never came. I could hear my own ragged breaths, the crawling and crunching of myriad subterranean life forms, and the frustrated grinding of my molars, but nothing else. My heart was dead and silent.

I lost control. Screaming in terror and rage and panic, I flailed my arms and legs wildly, pounding and kicking in a useless tantrum. The wood splintered above me, dirt pouring in and choking me through small holes made by my fists. I coughed and sputtered, frantically trying to clear the earth from my mouth and face. Unthinkingly, I tried to scramble away from the influx of moist, loose dirt. Screaming and choking, I sat up, defying the confines of my small space. As my head hit the interior of the casket, there was a cracking noise, and my head and shoulders broke through the wood.

In shock, I stopped breathing, aware of the soil covering my mouth and nose. Blind and unbreathing, I struggled to stand up. Somehow, I extricated myself from the splintered casket and pushed up through the black earth. It was like swimming in a hard, heavy sea. As I struggled to pump and clamber and claw my way to the surface, it occurred to me that my lungs weren't burning. Between the length of time I'd gone without oxygen and the physical exertion, I should have suffocated by now, and yet I felt little more than slight discomfort.

My hands burst free from the earth, followed by my head and the rest of my body. Pulling myself out from my grave, I collapsed on the ground, taking in greedy breaths of unnecessary air. As I looked around the cemetery, I gasped in surprise. It was a dark, moonless night, but, inexplicably, I could see everything. My eyes traced the veins on a tree leaf that rustled in the wind over a mile away. Turning, I could see every divot and imperfection in the granite headstone before me.

Isabella Marie Swan

1991-2014

Reading my own name on the headstone, a chill traveled up my spine. I found it mildly ironic that I had just discovered I had no heartbeat and didn't require air, then clawed my way out of my own casket, but merely reading the name on my headstone freaked me out.

Strangely, I was irritated at the lack of an epitaph. I fancied myself an avid reader/writer/poet, so I thought a fitting epitaph would be the least anyone could do. Guilt overwhelmed me when I realized there was no one left who knew me well enough to decide on one. My parents, Renee and Phil, were dead. Phil's brother, Uncle Charlie, was a man of few words, and he didn't know me well enough to know what would be appropriate, anyway.

Shaking my head to rid it of these selfish, meaningless thoughts, I truly took in my surroundings. Charlie buried me by my parents, I realized, as a wave of intense emotion threatened to sweep me away. I was laid to rest right beside Renee and Phil. Their shared headstone was elegant, and familiar. I picked it out myself, only six months ago.

A chronic pain tugged at my chest, raw and debilitating. I wrapped my arms around my knees, struggling to breathe, and propped myself against the smooth granite slab that bore my parent's names. The stone wasn't cool against my cheek—it was the exact same temperature as my skin. That vaguely struck me as odd, because midnight in Phoenix was usually the coolest time of day. Phoenix. I was in Phoenix, where I buried my Mom and Dad.

As I clung to the headstone, shaking with tearless sobs and trying to hold my body together, I was inundated with memories that cut like serrated knives to my flesh. It was September, my senior year of high school. My parents and I went out to dinner to celebrate my 18th birthday at one of my favorite restaurants. The three of us got along amazingly well—they were my best friends. I knew I was lucky to have such a close, loving family, and I cherished every moment of it.

We had discussed my college plans over dinner, talking excitedly about the different options. I wanted to go to school to study literature, and my parents were unwaveringly supportive. They were every bit as thrilled as I was at the prospect of my growing up and striking out on my own. After dinner, to my shock, Renee and Phil presented me with the entire contents of their savings account. I was stunned beyond belief—my birthday present was four years worth of tuition.

My immediate reaction was that I couldn't accept it, but they wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. It was their dream for me to go to a good university, to succeed and follow my dreams, and I knew in my heart that this was what they wanted. So, unbelievably, I accepted it, hoping that someday I would be able to do something as incredible for them.

We were on our way home – Phil driving, Renee in the passenger seat, me in the backseat, singing our lungs out to some inane pop song – when it happened. A horn blared, tires squealed, the world spun in slow motion… Renee's hand reached back to me, instinctively. Phil yelled my name. Even in death, their only thoughts were of me and my safety, never themselves.

A sickening screech of metal, the popping and shattering of glass, a bone-jarring impact, then nothing. Blackness. Despair. In one violent accident, I lost my entire life. As EMTs removed me from the vehicle, I screamed and begged them to leave me. I wanted to stay with the broken, battered bodies of my parents. I belonged with them—I wanted to die, too. What kind of cruel fate takes everyone you love and leaves you behind to suffer?

That was six months ago. The weeks that followed are a vague memory – I made the arrangements myself, had the funeral (the second worst day of my life), dealt with the legal matters – but it was all a blur. I was a cold, unfeeling zombie, retracted so far into my protective, catatonic state that I didn't think I'd ever reemerge.

About two months ago, I hit rock bottom. I sat in a warm bathtub, straight razor in hand, my mind made up. I'd done enough research to know that I should make the incisions lengthwise, not across. Strangely, I felt no fear. I just wanted the nightmare to end. I wasn't afraid of the pain—I almost welcomed the sensation of the blade sliding into the skin of my wrist. At least then I would feel something… I hadn't felt anything since that night, when the world went black. My soul died in that car with my parents, and I was just finishing the job.

At the last second, something stilled my hand. Not fear, or indecision… maybe it was guilt. What would Phil and Renee say? My loving parents, who had given me everything and asked for nothing in return… They would be horrified, devastated, disgusted, and I knew it. They would want me to live, to find a way to go on. My parents always made it clear that I was the most important thing in their lives, and the best thing that ever came from their 20 years of marriage. I knew that if I killed myself, I was killing the only thing that remained to tie them to this earth. With that realization, I couldn't do it. I couldn't destroy the only living by-product of their love: me.

That night, I made a conscious decision, and it was the hardest decision I had ever faced. I decided to live. Not to keep stumbling through the pathetic half-life I'd been leading, but to truly live. It would be so much easier to slide the cold steel blade deeply into the flesh of my arms. In my zeal, I'd probably sever arteries and tendons and muscles. The exquisite tug of the knife through my flesh would liberate me. To live would be much harder, I was certain.

Once I made the decision to try to patch up some semblance of my old existence, I knew I needed to confront all the emotions that I'd been hiding from since the accident. I sought therapy for two months, then I moved to Forks, WA to live with my dad's brother, Charlie. My Uncle Charlie was the Forks Chief of Police—a quiet, humble man from a quiet, humble town. I planned to stay with him to finish up the remaining three months of my senior year of high school before heading off to college, because it was what my parents would have wanted.

College. I'd applied to ten schools before the accident, and I held as many acceptances, but I had yet to decide where to go. I wanted to get as far away from Phoenix and my haunting memories as possible, that I knew for sure. Even though I only spent a few days in Forks, I realized that I wouldn't mind putting some distance between myself and the Olympic Peninsula, either. With its endlessly overcast skies and constant rain, Forks was not the kind of place where one went to recover. The place fit my mood, and the gloom was a persistent reminder of the emptiness in my heart, the pain that would never heal.

Then I remembered. The last thing I could remember was my first day of Forks High School. In my mind's eye, I could see the cloud cover, and swarms of students covered with hooded raincoats. In a blur of classes… the recollection faded out. In that moment, I knew the key to unlocking what had happened to me was in Forks. I would go back, and find answers to my burning questions: Am I dead? How did I die? What am I?

Burning. I felt a burning pain in my throat that, when I acknowledged its presence, escalated to a searing, scorching need. I fought back another wave of tearless sobs. What am I? My head snapped to the left, to the trees beyond the cemetery gates. I heard rustling, breathing, the thick pulsing of blood, the wet lub-dub of contracting ventricles…

Leaping to my feet with inhuman grace, I sought the source of the delicious, disgusting sounds. I ran with horrifying stealth, zipping and bobbing through the trees with barely a sound. I saw it then, stalking its own prey. A mountain lion. Crouching, I felt no fear, only an unfamiliar yet all-consuming predatory instinct. The searing pain in my throat worsened, and it felt like my insides were aflame. Without thinking, I leaped at the sinewy cat, launching myself onto its back. Ignoring the hisses and struggles, I sunk my teeth through the skin on the side of its neck, directly above the warm, pulsing jugular vein.

I clung to the weakening animal with all my strength, grunting and moaning as I sucked the warm, thick blood greedily into my mouth. The coppery fluid wasn't appetizing, but it soothed the fire in my throat. As I sighed, sated, and fell away from the limp body, I was assaulted by a stream of memories, painful and disjointed.

The salty, metallic stench of blood. Grunting, moaning, sucking, draining, swallowing. Dilating pupils that eclipsed topaz irises—the unfeeling eyes of a killer. Cold, smooth hands. A body of unyielding marble. A soft, velvet voice, predatory and dangerous.


	3. Remember

Disclaimer: SM owns all, I own nothing.

Remember

The next thing I knew, I was running. Sticking to the forests and sparsely populated areas, I planned to run and run until my lungs gave out with exhaustion. They never did. I didn't need food or sleep—I only stopped to drink the blood of animals when it was absolutely necessary. I found that I preferred the blood of bears and mountain lions to deer and elk. I snapped their necks and drained them dry, sometimes two at a time. I was a monster.

As I ran, particularly after I fed, more memories of the final day of my life resurfaced. Disconnected fragments of events came back to me, and I started to piece them together like some perverse puzzle.

The last day of my life was my first day at Forks High School. I was driving my beloved, battered old truck, which had somehow survived the journey from Arizona to Washington. I parked it in the lot outside the school, where it blended in with the other assorted beaters, save for three flashy cars that I noticed. As much as I tried to keep my head down and avoid notice, the other students treated me like a shiny new toy, vying for my attention and questioning me endlessly. The most remarkable part of my day was when I saw a beautiful boy and his strange, captivating family. He met my eyes in the cafeteria, giving me a look I couldn't interpret. They told me his name was Edward Cullen, and I saw him again in Biology.

Oh, God, no. Biology. My pace slowed from an inhumanly fast run to a sudden stop. I locked my knees when the memory assaulted my mind, and I was flung face-first into the ground with incredible momentum.

That day, I walked into Biology class, the overly friendly Mike Newton at my heels. The teacher directed me towards the only empty seat in the room, beside the impossibly gorgeous, bronze-haired boy. He gave me the most terrifying glare I'd ever seen—he had the cold, furious eyes of a predator. I walked past the fan, my strawberry-scented hair catching the breeze. Edward seemed to sniff the air. For a moment, he looked like he would spring from his seat, but he stayed put, his hands clenched so tightly around the edge of the table that I'd swear he'd warped the wood.

All through class, he stared at me with a murderous glare. He terrified me, yet simultaneously intrigued me. So beautiful, so dangerous. So frightening, so flawless. Like the sullen Angel of Death. I imagined touching him in ways my virgin hands and lips and body had never dreamed of touching anyone.

Before the end of class, he leaned over to me. My heart pounded in my chest. A flood of fear-induced adrenaline surged through my veins at the exact instant that an equally powerful flood of arousal soaked through my white cotton panties. Edward inhaled deeply, groaning, oblivious to the curious stares of the people around us. It was almost as if he could smell me. He spoke into my ear and his honeyed breath swirled around my face, intoxicating me.

"Bella," he spoke in a silken tone, "would you mind accompanying me out to my car after class?" He looked down shyly, then glanced up at me from beneath his long fringe of black lashes. All traces of darkness were gone from his eyes, and they shone a beguiling topaz. "I've got something I'd like to show you." He held my gaze for a moment and exhaled another delicious breath of air into my face.

Unable to form a coherent response, I nodded. It felt as though he had me under some sort of a spell, and I was powerless to refuse him. When class ended, he simply hooked my arm in his and led me out to the parking lot. My heart fluttered at his touch, and he looked over at me with a smirk, as if he'd heard it. Dazzled by his scent, his touch, and his mere proximity, I forgot all about his strange behavior in class, and the terrifying blackness of his eyes.

As we walked in the fresh air, my head seemed to clear, and I realized that I'd agreed to leave school with a complete stranger. By the time he'd led me nearly to the end of the parking lot and diverted our course toward the surrounding woods, I began to get nervous. "Uh, Edward," I asked, my voice shaking perceptibly, "where are we going? You said you wanted to show me something in your car."

"Hmm?" he said, as if I were interrupting his thoughts. "Oh, yes. Well, I decided I'd like to show you something in the woods, instead." His innocently lopsided grin did little to assuage my unease as he led me into the woods.

He pulled me to a stop in a small clearing and paced around me, clearly pleased with himself. He looked strangely like a photographer, trying to set up the perfect shot. He circled me once, twice, then fluffed my long, mahogany locks out around my shoulders and stood back, admiring me. Then, my worst nightmare began.

Edward stalked up to me slowly, practically purring in anticipatory delight. I began to shake uncontrollably, and he seemed to enjoy my reaction. My heart felt like it would thump out of my ribcage, but I couldn't make my legs move. Somehow, I knew that even if I tried to run, he would catch me. Whatever he was trying to do, he was drawing it out. I couldn't stop a big, salty tear from rolling down my cheek.

Instantly, he stood before me. His pointy pink tongue darted out and licked the tear from my face. As if he couldn't restrain himself any longer, he stepped forward, his hand fisting in my thick hair and pulling my head back to expose my neck. He buried his nose in the skin of my neck, dragging it from my collarbone, up beneath my ear and over to my jaw line. Rubbing and nuzzling his face into my neck, he reminded me of a cat, seeking to saturate itself with its favorite smell. He held my stiff, shaking frame close to his body, and I could feel the hardness of his erection pressing against my stomach.

His hands began roaming roughly over my body, feeling and squeezing wherever he pleased. As he touched me, I began weeping guiltily. After all, it was I who had been fantasizing about this since the first moment I saw him. I envisioned his hands on my body, his lips on my skin, but not like this. This was wrong. Cautiously, I spoke. "Please stop, Edward. This is wrong. You're hurting me." The words came out as barely a whisper.

He removed his lips from my neck to look at my face. I'm sure my expressive brown eyes relayed fear, hurt, and bewilderment, but none of those emotions seemed to register with him. "I can't stop," he said with a shrug and a deceptively boyish smile. "You see, my dear, I'm already going to hell anyway, so I may as well do it thoroughly."

With that, he let his sharp, slick teeth graze my neck, and I whimpered with fear. "Hush now, Bella. This doesn't have to hurt. I can make it feel good for you. Do you want me to do that for you, Bella?"

If he could somehow ease the pain of whatever horrible thing he was going to do to me, I would let him. If that made me a coward or a traitor to my own body, then I was both, but in truth I just feared the pain. So, with tears in my eyes, confusion still clouding my mind, I nodded.

Edward met my eyes for a long moment, and his golden eyes penetrated mine with an unparalleled intensity. He inhaled deeply then breathed a swirling cloud of his glorious scent into my nose and between my parted lips, rendering me senseless and unsteady on my feet. Suddenly, I felt no trepidation, no uncertainty, only inexplicable, undeniable lust. I was utterly and completely dazzled.

My eyes were unfocused as he pressed his soft lips to mine with exquisite gentleness. Our mouths moved together, my warm, pliant kisses meeting his cool, firm ones. Overcome by the incredible sensations stirring within my body, I threaded my small hands in the back of his hair. He kept up the languid pace of our kisses as his icy hands moved under the hem at the back of my shirt, stroking the skin there with feather-light caresses. I shivered at his touch and released a small, involuntary groan into his open mouth. In response, he slipped his clever tongue between my lips, massaging mine and bathing it in his sweet, incredible taste, intoxicating my senses further. Completely under his spell, my body reacted of its own accord, and I sucked his tongue further into my mouth, eliciting a guttural moan from deep within his chest.

One of his hands moved to tangle in my hair, the other slipped under the front of my shirt, grazing my stomach and traveling up to cup my breast. Removing his hands from me for a moment, he gently pulled my shirt off over my head, then unbuttoned his own and spread it out upon the ground. One hand beneath my neck, the other around my waist, he lowered me down on his shirt.

Distracting me with gentle kisses to my lips, he quickly unhooked my bra and unbuttoned my pants. Climbing over to straddle my body while continuing to kiss me, his sweet breath enveloped my face, and he slipped my jeans and underwear off my legs, then slid my bra off my shoulders, tossing it onto the pile of clothing. I barely noticed that he was still almost completely clothed, while I lay bare and spread before him. One of his hands moved to the back of my neck, gently angling my chin up to give him better access to my mouth. The other hand moved deftly to my left breast, squeezing it gently and brushing his thumb across the nipple. It hardened beneath his touch, and I shivered.

His hands moved to lightly caress my arms and shoulders, then down to my stomach and up to my breasts, lightly teasing my nipples then pinching and rolling them between his fingertips. I moaned loudly as a warm surge of wetness trickled from my body. Edward smelled my arousal, and his eyes darkened. While one hand continued to toy with my hardened nipple, his other hand moved lower, towards my swollen, wet heat. I gasped at the unfamiliar sensation of his long, dexterous fingers on my delicate skin, but he continued to kiss my mouth gently, distracting me from the intensity of his touch.

His slick fingers slid down the folds of my skin, then moved up to circle my most sensitive part, then down again in a maddening circuit. His head lowered to suckle my breast, trailing soft kisses and nibbles and licks to its hardened peak. He sucked my nipple between his lips and teased it with the pointy tip of his tongue as his hand continued its adept movements, making me groan and arch my back in pleasure. When I did so, he moved to the side before sliding me over his lap, holding me as he continued to touch my body.

Edward moved his lips back up to mine, penetrating my mouth with his nimble tongue just as I felt the foreign sensation of his finger sliding inside me. I gasped and he deepened our kiss, adding another finger to my throbbing need and massaging my sensitive nerve bundle with the wet pad of his thumb. An unfamiliar feeling swelled in my stomach and I began to pant, unsure of what was happening to me. "Ssh, now," he spoke against my lips, his scent enveloping me once again. "Don't be afraid. Just let yourself go."

With that, he quickened the pace of his motions, sliding his fingers into me and massaging my insides while his thumb worked the tight bundle of nerves above. Worried and confused, I locked my gaze on Edward's swirling topaz eyes. In that moment, he was my only tie to the world, and I trusted him to keep me from floating away. I had forgotten his words about promising me pleasure to distract me from the pain—I had forgotten about everything but the sensations welling up inside me. He pulled his mouth away from mine to look into my eyes as I came apart in his arms.

As wave after wave of ecstasy crashed over me, he lowered his lips to my neck, sinking his teeth into my flesh as his fingers continued to pump inside me. I cried out in a tortured expression of pleasure and pain as he latched onto my neck, sucking with wild abandon. Hips arching under my back, he held me across his lap and ground his erection against me as he grunted and moaned into my neck. He sucked deeply from my wound, and as he thrust and twitched against my back, I could feel the cool dampness of his release soaking through the fabric of his jeans.

My body went limp as the world went dark. It was then that I began to die.

As I died, I had a strange dream. I dreamed that Edward suddenly stopped, disengaging himself from my neck. "What have I done? Oh God, Bella, please! NO!" he wailed. Even my dying brain knew that was an impossible scenario, though. Killers feel no remorse, and that was just my mind's pathetic attempt to ease my suffering as I slipped into the cold darkness of the eternal night.

Naked, alone, and left for dead, I burned for what may have been days or months or years. When the burning stopped and my heart exploded in my chest, I remained still. I felt cold and lifeless and dead, inside and out. I thought I was dead. So, I withdrew into the protective cocoon of my mind. I was there, locked within my mind, when the search dogs found me, when the medical examiner broke bone saws on my body trying to cut me open for an autopsy, and when they lowered my casket into the ground at my funeral.

At some point, lying cold and undead within the earth, I must have realized that I was not dead, after all. I was no longer living, either… he had stolen that from me.


End file.
